First it was the peaches—we have two trees. We ate and ate, made jam, desserts, smoothies, and then froze the rest.
Then came the roma tomatoes. We were given a huge box full of them and they needed to be used immediately. They sat on the counter for a couple of days before I found instructions online about making oven-roasted tomatoes. That was the easiest and best thing I’ve ever done with garden tomatoes! I made a few batches of those and then froze them in bags. We’ve been eating them with pasta, pizza, frittatas, and roasted cauliflower—anything you’d do with sun-dried tomatoes. I’m loving them! Next year I think I’ll plant some romas just for roasting.
Finally, the plums on our tree were ripe. We love these for snacking and for sack lunches, but there were too many to eat, so we gave some away, froze a couple of bags, made a couple batches of jam and a few plum desserts, like the galette above. This has become my new favorite—a little easier than regular pie. I tried it with peaches and apples, too, and they all turned out great. For a couple of weeks we had huge bowls of plums on the counter, and now we are down to about a dozen left in the refrigerator.
Most recently we had apples. Buckets and buckets of them—given to us by a neighbor. She came over and we canned apple pie filling for hours. How many apple pies can a family eat in a year? I guess we’ll find out. After we filled the last of our jars, I sighed in relief. Done! All was safely gathered in. Until I walked into the garage and saw that my friend had left behind two more boxes of apples. These are not easy apples to deal with. The trees hadn’t been sprayed, so the apples were a bit wormy. You can’t just eat them, you have to cut the bad spots out first. I’m throwing them away, I thought. I can’t deal with anymore fruit! But I just couldn’t do it—I was raised not to waste food. Sigh . So I made applesauce. I finally finished yesterday. For the first time in weeks, we have no more bowls, boxes, or buckets of fruit in the kitchen. Hooray! But tell that to the fruit flies. They seemed to have taken up permanent residence. That’s okay—it gives Brian something to do. 
His latest hobby is sucking the flies in mid-air with the vacuum hose. It cracks me up. And just when he thinks he got every last one, a couple hours later there are a few more. He’s been at it for days—I hope he wins soon!
